Externally, 1 TB. Thats all that is available, and you have to buy the Western Digital My DVR Expander. Only one that will work. I got it on sale from Amazon for $99, but it seems to vary in price from that and $130.

Has anyone upgraded to a 3TB drive and been able to use all the space?

Yes! and the TiVo would not boot, even if i just made a copy without expansion, any drive over 2.2Tb has a different format system that is not compatible with TiVo at this time. (its not compatible with Windows 7 and a normal BIOS, Windows 7 has some workarounds and some of the drive mfg have some special software that can be used to make the full drive (2.5Tb and up) bootable with a normal BIOS.)

Actually, I think that limit is PER DRIVE. Check the upgrade FAQ for sure.

Probably so, but the catch is that unlike the S1 and S2 IDE master and slave setup, the second SATA connection on an S3 HD and up board is only going to work with that very small handful of WD model numbers of the drive inside the enclosure.

Probably so, but the catch is that unlike the S1 and S2 IDE master and slave setup, the second SATA connection on an S3 HD and up board is only going to work with that very small handful of WD model numbers of the drive inside the enclosure.

Well, I thought the OLED S3 could use other drives externally, and I *thought* that there were hacks to use a 2nd drive even on newer ones -- maybe even hooked to the SATA inside rather than via the normal external port, but maybe I'm totally wrong on that part.

Well, I thought the OLED S3 could use other drives externally, and I *thought* that there were hacks to use a 2nd drive even on newer ones -- maybe even hooked to the SATA inside rather than via the normal external port, but maybe I'm totally wrong on that part.

Yeah, the original S3 can use an "unapproved" external, but the eSATA port is attached to the motherboard so is only easily accessible from outside on the back panel.

(The S3 HD has a regular SATA header and a short jumper to an eSATA socket mounted in the back panel)

Originally someone discovered that Kickstart 62, previously undocumented, would let you add an external to an original S3.

(Software version 9.2 disabled KS 62, but you can still add an external, see below.)

This news got out before TiVo wanted it to, because they really didn't yet have all of their ducks in a row at the time.

Bear in mind, you can only add external to an original S3 if it's still using the original 250GB internal drive.

If you've replaced it with a bigger internal, you're out of luck.

And of course it puts part of each recording on both drives so you lose them all if anything goes wrong.

Also, unlike the S1s, which were designed for being able to take two IDE drives and therefore came with 2 Molex power connectors, and the S2s which still had an IDE header and a Molex you could easily plug a Y adapter into, the S3s have an internal combo data/power SATA plug that means no easy Y'ing of power and the power supply's probably not big enough to be running 2 drives anyway.

I sent him the two HDD's, the internal xl4 and a blank one only. it cost $60, (50 for the process & 10 for shipping)
he listed a couple of options, he'll supply the external hdd and the antec external case if you want (for more money of course).

you could send him the entire box, but then it'd be more for shipping

eta; I didn't ask him if another hdd could be used, i stuck with the WD model